Reason With Me
by Never-Clip-My-Wings-x
Summary: "Hello. You don't know me. But I stole your laptop, and I took your TV. I sold that rosary... for 50p." Christine comes home to an apparently empty house, only to be confronted by a girl with a disturbing story to tell, which parallels her own life scarily and changes it unimaginably.
1. You Don't Know Me

It had been an incredibly long day. Not only had half of Year Ten decided to stage a protest against a supply teacher, who may well have been a bit of an idiot, but wasn't worth the sheer effort the pupils had put into their protest, but Nicki had gone home ill having practically collapsed, leaving Christine alone to cope with everything going on in her school, which was, if anything, even more chaotic than usual.

She put her heavy laptop bag, containing the replacement for her recently stolen laptop, over one shoulder, her handbag on the other, and picked up the two large canvas bags full of marking from her Year Eleven English class. Slamming the boot of her silver car shut with her one free hand, she made her way to the red front door of her terraced house. Connor and Imogen had gone out tonight, and were staying at the schoolhouse, and so the house would be empty but for Christine and the vast quantities of paperwork she'd amassed over the last few days. She had no idea how much paper being a headmistress could possibly have entailed when she took on the job - or rather, it was forced upon her. On a night like this just a few months ago, she would have opened herself several large bottles of strong alcohol and consumed them until she eventually passed out, waking up cold on the sofa or the floor, surrounded by the empty bottles. Now, she was able to just drink a bottle of water as she marked, occasionally texting a friend or going to get some food from the kitchen to punctuate the many lazily written essays piled up on the cream carpet of her living room.

She pulled her keys out of her pocket and unlocked the front door, trying desperately not to allow any of her bags to slip from her grasp as she opened the door and walked through into the hallway, kicking the door closed behind her. Breathing a sigh of relief, she slipped off her black high heeled court shoes and placed her bags on the polished wooden floor of the hall, the noise echoing around the room. The house seemed empty, without Connor, Imogen or Michael. God, she missed him - Michael. Nights were cold and lonely without him holding her, sleeping next to her, making her coffee in the mornings... but she was determined not to cry. She'd shed enough tears over him recently; stood in the kitchen on a Saturday morning, half expecting him to come up behind her and wrap his arms around her, kissing her hair softly. She'd cried a lot, that first Saturday.

She put her keys down on the worktop as she went into the kitchen, not bothering to look over to the dining table as she walked over to the window to stare out onto the grey-blue sea. The colour of Michael's eyes, she thought, closing her own eyes as she felt the salty tears come. She wouldn't cry.

"Hello." a female voice came, and Christine must have jumped half a foot in the air. Jesus Christ, there was a strange woman in her kitchen, while she was in the otherwise deserted house alone.

Christine slowly turned around, realising that she didn't have her phone the pocket of her grey work trousers, and that she was well and truly alone.

There was a young woman - a girl, actually - probably around sixteen years of age, stood in front of her, in the corner of the neat kitchen. Her bleach blonde hair was wild; wavy and unkempt, tumbling down to her too-small waist. She wore a short lace dress which had once been cream, but had now faded to a vaguely grey colour, and was layered underneath a thick crimson cardigan, rolled up above her bony elbows. Her skin was pale, almost blending into her thick blonde locks, and on her feet she wore black leather boots with tarnished silver buckles. Her hands were in her pockets, and it crossed Christine's mind that she could very easily be concealing a knife on her body. While that prospect scared her, she realised that she didn't actually fear what could happen.

"You don't know me," she began. Her accent was indistinguishable yet clearly Scottish - she could have been from Orkney or Edinburgh, but Christine thought that she was probably a travelling girl with no roots placed in any particular place. She took her hands out of her pockets, and she didn't seem to be carrying anything - her slender hands were shaking, grasping each other as if trying to pretend she had someone holding her hand. Christine shook her head; incapable of speech as never before. She was frozen to the spot, but not in fear - she wasn't sure what she felt, but she wasn't afraid of the girl.

"But I stole your laptop... and I took your TV," she paused, her eyes dropping from Christine's to the floor as if she was embarrassed, "And I sold that rosary... for 50p." She said all of this matter-of-factly, with very little emotion to her words. It was if she was detached from her words, incapable of expression. It reminded Christine of how she'd been as an alcoholic... and suddenly, she saw it. The girl stood in front of her wasn't just a common thief, as other people saw. The keloid scars from needles on her arms, her hollow eyes, her too-skinny body. Other people would have screamed at the girl, shook her, demanded their possessions back. But Christine just couldn't - she was just too much like her young self.

The rosary she was talking about had been that of Christine's mother, and she'd always hated it. Her mother had been a hypocrite; convinced that spending half her time praying made up for the way she treated people - especially her daughter, who had turned to older men and the solace they could bring... and, of course, later, the alcohol they could buy. She was, in a way, glad that the rosary had gone, because it meant that she herself could move on.

The girl seemed to be waiting for a response from Christine, picking at her uneven nails worriedly as she looked desperately at her.

"What's your name?" Christine asked, scrutinizing the girl with her gaze. The girl's indistinguishably coloured eyes met her own, and she opened her mouth but seemed unable to speak for a few seconds.

"Evanna."

"And how old are you, Evanna?"

"I..." she paused, thinking, "I don't know. I was born in October 1996... so nearly seventeen, I suppose." she shrugged, rubbing her face with a small, grubby hand. Her eyes were round, with long, dark, curly eyelashes framing them. Childlike in their innocence, perhaps, but with a guard and a harshness that was very rarely seen in a girl of her age.

"Do you want a drink?" Christine asked Evanna, slowly walking towards her as if she was approaching a ticking bomb.

"Why aren't you shouting at me?" the girl demanded, her eyes shot with confusion. Blue, Christine noticed. Blue with flecks of grey and gold, the irises rimmed with thick black. But the whites of her eyes were bloodshot, her waterline raw red and providing an incredibly stark contrast to the irises.

"Because I know what you feel like. I know that shouting won't get through to you. Maybe you want to be shouted at, because you think it'll shake you out of it, but it won't; you'll just feel worse," Christine explained, watching carefully as Evanna shrank away from her slightly, "Anyway - drink?"

"You don't have anything strong, do you?" the girl asked, biting her bottom lip and looking up at Christine. Evanna was much smaller than her - probably about five feet and two inches; half a foot shorter than the headmistress, and up close, she looked vulnerable, with uneven skin and chapped lips.

Christine shook her head, "No... I'm afraid that's why I know what you feel like."

"Oh... I'm sorry. I, er... anyway, can I just have water, please?"

Christine took a large glass from the cupboard above the sink and filled it with cold water for Evanna, signalling for her to sit down at the table as she got a packet of biscuits from the tin on the windowsill. Evanna sat down slowly, seemingly trying not to mark the large wooden table as she leant on it with her slightly grubby arms. She looked around the kitchen with her big eyes, taking in her surroundings as she was given the tall glass full of cold water, and clung to it with her bony fingers; searing hot skin against ice cold glass.

"Just have that, and we can talk, okay?" Christine asked rhetorically, and Evanna nodded, more to comfort herself than anything. She liked the older woman; she liked the fact that she understood that shouting wouldn't get them anywhere. She was warm, kind and understanding about her, which she'd never encountered in someone else before. She realised that authority didn't work well on addicts.

-  
_So, I've never written anything about Christine before, but I've sort of grown to like her recently. The song this is based upon is called Reason With Me, and it's by Sinead O'Connor. Evanna is my own character._


	2. Reason

Evanna gulped down her water quickly, nibbling on a digestive biscuit with her slightly uneven teeth, looking nervously at Christine every so often as if she was making sure that this wasn't all a trick; that she'd not phoned the police and they weren't on their way to arrest Evanna right this moment.

"Better?" the headmistress asked the teenager, who had gone back to picking at her uneven nails and avoiding eye contact as best she could. Evanna nodded slightly, before beginning to run her finger around the rim of the tall, empty glass, swinging her skinny legs as she couldn't quite touch the tiled floor of the kitchen with her small feet. She looked like a little girl lost; left behind by her mother accidentally in a coffee shop, biting her lip and looking all around her with wide, scared eyes.

"So tell me about yourself." Christine said, knowing that distracting her and keeping her mind working was the only way to get Evanna to talk. If she wasn't thinking slowly and deeply about each and every word leaving her mouth, then she might just reveal the key to unlock her secrets.

"Well, uhm... my name's Evanna Gallagher... I was born in Glasgow, and my mam put me up for adoption... but nobody wanted me, so I ended up in a care home until I was about nine." she paused in between her points as if she didn't know whether to elaborate, looking up unsurely at Christine to check that she was still listening. Her accent, upon closer listening, was Glaswegian, with some words pronounced in unidentifiable accents, presumably from several different parts of Scotland.

"Then I was adopted, but I ran away with an older girl in the same place when I was twelve, her name was..." she stopped, her clear eyes showing her thoughts racing as they flitted around the kitchen, "Joanna... or Jess. I can't... I can't remember." Her tears welled up in her enormous, glass-like eyes, and she wiped them away viciously, rubbing at her pale skin as if she thought it would bring her to her senses. Christine pushed the box of tissues across the table, and Evanna took one gladly, wiping away the salty tears roughly. They'd left trails on her face where they'd removed the grubbiness from her skin and left ivory tracks, like a half-finished spider's web across her face.

"We lived in hostels and squats and places like that for a couple of years, but she drank a lot - she had an older boyfriend, and he wasn't nice... and she died when I was fourteen. I can't remember what they said... cirrhosis or something. They couldn't do anything in the hospital, like... she was only seventeen." More tears fell from her orb-like eyes, and she didn't wipe them away this time. Christine herself found a lone tear making its way down her own cheek as she realised that what had happened to that girl could just as easily have happened to her. She realised that her alcoholism hadn't only had the ability to destroy her life, but those of the people around her, too.

"She'd done smack, because she said it stopped the pain and that... and I found some in one of her old bags with a hypodermic... so I tried it," she continued, pinching a scar on her arm which Christine imagined was probably what Evanna knew to be the oldest of many, "And it worked, I suppose... I mean, I liked it. So I got more, and it just sort of began from there." She was shaking now, almost as if she was totally incapable of controlling what her body was doing. She looked desperate - presumably she hadn't had a fix in several hours, and was beginning to show withdrawal symptoms. Coming down from her high; mind catching up with what she was saying and doing, her body gradually beginning to unhinge without the drugs.

"Evanna, I want you to promise me something."

"I can't promise. I always break promises; I'm sorry, but I can't." Evanna said hurriedly, shaking her head rapidly. She was sweating now, as well as shivering, her legs still swinging wildly as she sat on the chair. She itched the skin on her arms, her blue eyes darting around the room as if she was fixated upon looking for something that wasn't there. Christine watched her silently across the table for a few seconds before deciding that she couldn't watch Evanna doing this; couldn't watch her destroying herself with an addiction as Christine herself had spent much of her life hellbent upon doing to herself. She took hold of Evanna's tiny, scarred wrists firmly, as if she was telling off a naughty toddler, threatening to not let her play with a toy. She wished it was that simple.

"Listen to me." she commanded, and Evanna looked up, her eyes skittish and wide, the whites visible all around her vivid irises. She'd initially fought the contact with her wrists, but suddenly gave up her cause and allowed her arms to be controlled by the older woman; defeated. She was slumped in the chair now as if all her energy had left her, a salty tear glistening as it made its way slowly down her cheek, dragging a trail of porcelain skin through the dirt on her face.

"I'm going to run you a bath, you can have a cup of tea or something, and then we'll talk again. Do you have any drugs with you?" Christine asked, watching the teenager breathe rapidly as she shook, eyes still darting around the kitchen. Somewhere deep in those glimmering blue glass orbs, the girl wanted to be free from her addiction. There was a part of her, however small it was, which wanted to not spend the rest of her days looking for her next fix, and somehow, that tiny part of her overpowered the addiction in that moment, as she handed over two small, full bags of the powder in its pure form. Christine had never actually seen pure Heroin, despite having known several addicts, and it occurred to her that it looked very much like densely packed brown sugar, albeit not having so innocent an effect upon the user.

"C'mon." Christine murmured, retaining her hold on just one of the teenager's slight wrists, and helping her stand up slowly. Evanna's stature was slightly hunched as she stood, as if she didn't have enough energy to stand straight as she followed Christine through the large, light kitchen and through into the slightly darker hallway, barely able to look where she was going.

Christine put an arm around the teenager's quaking shoulders and led her slowly through the hall and upstairs, supporting her frail body as she herself could not do. Evanna stumbled more than once, again seeming incapable of controlling her own body, but she clung to both Christine and the cream banister, determined to make it up the flight of steps and onto the landing. The shoulder of her dress was torn and pinned back together with safety pins, tarnished like the buckles on her boots, and it tore at Christine's heart to see the girl, even younger than her son, so very broken.

_What am I doing?_ Christine thought to herself as she began to run the hot water into the bath as Evanna leant against the cream tiled wall, still shaking rapidly._ A drug addict turns up in my house, having burgled me, and I offer her a drink, a bath, and consider letting her stay in my spare room? I've gone mad_, she thought. Regardless of what her head told her, her heart told her that she had to try and help Evanna, if only to stop another girl growing up, whilst still spiralling downwards in addiction.


	3. Be That I Am

Christine had got Evanna some old clothes of Imogen's, which she was sure would still manage to be too large for Evanna's tiny, fragile body. She'd found a thick red jumper and some black skinny jeans at the very back of her daughter-in-law's wardrobe, and taken them to the bathroom, where Evanna was sat on the edge of the bath, clad in nothing but her underwear and her crimson cardigan. Christine backed out of the room as she saw this, but Evanna noticed her and met her gaze with her enchanting eyes.

"It's fine; it's nothing you won't have seen before." she smiled vaguely, standing up and walking over to Christine, who felt uncomfortable but strangely at ease stood in front of Evanna. Her ivory lace bra was satin, and looked brand new in comparison to her tattered cardigan, but the structure of the garment was still unable to disguise the obvious protruding bones all over her body. The keloid scars, Christine realised, weren't limited to her arms - the greying marks were smattered all the way up her legs, across her abdomen, and even a couple on her breasts. Jesus, how long had she been an addict? Christine supposed that she herself was lucky, in that alcoholism didn't create scars on the surface - only those underneath. She, unlike Evanna, wouldn't be forced to see her former addiction on her mottled body for the rest of her days.

"I've brought you some clothes... they're my daughter-in-law's, but she never wears them, and she wouldn't mind, anyway." Christine explained, passing the clothes to Evanna, who strolled across the bathroom and placed the garments on the floor next to the bath. She smiled at Christine, and for a moment, Christine saw just how pretty the girl could be, if she wasn't torn apart by her addiction.

"What's her name?" Evanna enquired, her head tilted slightly to one side. The shaking wasn't as obvious now, but was still there; particularly in her slight hands, clasped in front of her body.

"Imogen, and my son's called Connor. They're out tonight, though."

"Thank you," Evanna smiled slightly again, bowing her head, "Thank you for not writing me off."

Christine reached out a hand instinctively, placing it on the teenager's matchstick-like right arm. Evanna flinched, like a wild horse making contact with a human for the first time, and her mane of blonde hair fell from behind her shoulder. She looked up slowly, her eyes wide once again, and smiled widely for the first time, as Christine took back her hand, before backing out of the bathroom and closing the door.

"Are you a teacher?" Evanna's soft voice came from the living room door. It was now half past seven, and the light outside had faded as the sun set over Greenock. She'd put on the jumper and jeans, both of which were at least two sizes too big for her, despite Imogen having a slight figure. It highlighted just how tiny Evanna really was; the folds in the denim jeans where her legs were too skinny to fill them.

"Mmm-hmm; an English teacher." Christine replied, looking round to Evanna. She looked so innocent, wearing the oversized jumper and jeans; long hair damp and drying in loose waves.

"Oh... I can't read, really." Evanna admitted, a lock of hair falling over her face. She looked embarrassed by her admission, and Christine wondered how long it had been since she'd been educated in any way, "I mean, I can read simple things, but it takes me a long time. Can't write very well either."

"Sit down." Christine said softly, and Evanna sat on the floor, her legs stretched out in front of her. Her feet, like her body, were tiny; clad in a pair of fluffy cream socks that Christine had found in the back of one of her drawers.

"I haven't been to school since I was nine, and I always used to bunk off with the older girls, even back then. I wasn't good at stuff like English and Maths and that... I liked books and stuff, but I was just never there." The teenager explained, staring blankly at the cream wall in front of her. She was still shaking violently, clasping her hands together in a vain attempt to keep her limbs still.

"I was rubbish at Maths, too," Christine smiled, "And believe it or not, I'm dyslexic. I could never read that well, either, but I'm still an English teacher."

"Dyslexia... is that like, when the letters all jumble up in front of you? I think I have that, probably."

"Can you read the title of this?" Christine asked, passing Evanna her old, battered copy of Much Ado About Nothing which she'd had since she was about Evanna's age. Evanna took it in her tiny hands and squinted at the title; running a finger along the engraved title of the otherwise plain burgundy cover. She opened her mouth, like a small child trying to put together the different parts of the words.

"Much.. Ado... About... No Thing?" She asked, squinting again at the cover, "What's it about?" She looked up at Christine wide-eyed, with more interest than she'd been met with by any of her English classes she taught.

"Much Ado About Nothing... it's about two people who are in love, but they won't admit it to themselves. They pretend they hate each other, and their friends eventually get them to declare their love. It's a good book."

"Oh. Is it by... Shakespeare? Is that his name?" Evanna enquired nervously. Considering that she hadn't been educated for almost half her life, she seemed more interested in books than the average A Level student, never mind a junkie who robbed people's houses to pay her way. Christine nodded, and Evanna began to thumb through the book, looking at the various annotations on the pages and trying to read Christine's messy handwriting as best she could. It was like watching the young version of herself, Christine thought - had she become addicted earlier, she knew that she'd have been just like Evanna, and that terrified her, and made her equally desperate to stop Evanna's downward spiral into addiction.

Evanna liked the blonde woman - she wasn't totally sure of her name, but she thought that the letters behind the door had been addressed to "Ms. Christine Mulgrew", who she assumed was the woman she was now sat next to. Her eyes were a warm hazel-green; deep and understanding - not cold and harsh like most people's eyes. Christine was kind to her - she realised that shouting at Evanna would only alienate her and make her withdraw back into her shell.

Christine had finished marking her essays, as Evanna had managed to read the first page of "Much Ado About Nothing", and the two were now sat at Christine's large, wooden kitchen table as she served Evanna a cup of tea and a microwaveable meal that she'd still managed to burn. Michael had been so much better at cooking than she was - at least he understood how the microwave worked. Despite the slightly burnt nature of the meal, Evanna ate it quickly - she was quite a dainty eater, despite having lived on the streets and survived hand-to-mouth. Christine spent the time it took Evanna to eat the meal by staring blankly out of the window, wishing Michael was there with her. She'd got used to being alone after she and Joe had divorced, but then she'd had the bottle for company - it was lonely, now, without anyone.

"Do you miss him?" Evanna asked, and Christine frowned, confused, "Your boyfriend. You miss him."

How did Evanna know that? There were no photos left up of her with Michael - she'd taken them all down when he left, because she knew she couldn't bear to see those memories every day. Was it really that obvious - how alone she felt without him?

"You just look as if you're always waiting for him," Evanna explained, her eyes wide and sad, like the sea on a cold winter's morning, "I've seen people like that before. I get it."

Christine turned from the window to Evanna, and sat back down at the table next to the teenager, resting her elbow on the wooden table and her head in her slightly shaking hand, and sighing deeply.

"He left, a couple of weeks ago. He was my boss, and we got together, he moved in... but he said he wasn't in love with me any more." she admitted, staring at her half-empty mug of tea swirling in the white ceramic mug. That, too, had been Michael's mug - the one she'd made his coffee in every morning. It was strange how tiny things like that could be so symbolic and cause so much heartache by their very existence.

"What was his name?"

"Michael." A single tear fell from her eye, and she hurriedly wiped it away, hoping that Evanna hadn't noticed. She was meant to be a strong woman who could cope on her own, not a weak mess of a person who needed her man back to carry on. Evanna, ever observant, saw the tear escape Christine's eye, and in a rare show of emotion, left her chair and put a frail arm around her. Christine took a strange sense of comfort from the gesture, and in turn wrapped her arm around Evanna's tiny body, her fingers able to count the protruding ribs beneath the thick jumper. It was like having a daughter whom she could confide in, although she knew it wasn't fair to saddle Evanna with her own problems - while Imogen was kind, she lacked the understanding that Evanna possessed despite her years. Not many sixteen year olds were junkies who'd seen the only person in their life consumed and killed by alcoholism, and that gave her the world-weary demeanour which age couldn't.

"You can stay in the spare room, Evanna." Christine told her as she felt her body shaking, either from withdrawal or tears - or, indeed, both. She stroked her back until she stopped shaking, as if her mind had finally managed to control what her body was doing. She remembered somebody holding her like this when she was drunk, but she couldn't remember who it had been - perhaps Audrey or Maggie.

Somehow, now, Evanna and Christine had developed a fledgling ability to support each other, understanding each other's emotions and difficulties and helping to lighten the weight the other bore. And that night, as Christine left Evanna to sleep in the spare room at the front of the house, and went to her own bed, she didn't feel quite so alone.


	4. Turn My Nightmares Into Dreams

The clock said that it was seven minutes past two in the morning. Evanna lay, wide awake, under the heavy duvet of the bed in the spare room of Christine's house, and whilst it was definitely a considerable improvement upon her usual accommodation of a shop doorway, she was uncomfortable, desperate for a fix, yet equally desperate not to let Christine down.

She was shaking wildly all over, her skin itching as if she was being bitten constantly by tiny, invisible ants. She was clad in a pair of Imogen's pyjamas, which once again, were far too big for her despite only being a size eight, and her body was going from feeling searing hot to freezing cold, with no middle ground between the two extremes. She got out of bed, her joints and muscles aching all over as she stood up - she was getting inconsolable now in her desperation to have heroin flood her veins and take away the pain. Her skin was flaming; a mixture of the perceived heat and the fact that she'd been scratching at her skin for the past half hour or so, and she made her way slowly to the bathroom, hunched like an octogenarian with severe arthritis, not a sixteen year old girl.

She ran the cold tap; water flooding into the white ceramic sink until she cupped her shaking hands beneath the tap and filled them with the cool, clear liquid. She leant over the sink, a few waves from her long hair falling into it, and splashed her face with the water, inhaling sharply as it hit her face. She turned the tap off, watching the water swirl down the plughole, and then looked up into the mirror in front of her.

She'd never understood how it was that people could bear to look in mirrors in daylight - even now, when there was so little light she could barely make out her features, she wished she hadn't looked. Bags under her eyes, skin pale and drawn, lips chapped - she looked like a stressed thirty-something rather than her own age. She'd always hated the structure of her face - her nose was small and slightly upturned, her cheekbones high, her eyebrows having no natural arch to them, and as a result, she wouldn't look at her own reflection if she could help it. Her self-confidence was receding as she grew up - as if she'd ever had any of it anyway - and she loathed everything from the top of her head to the tip of her toes. She knew exactly how to make the feeling go away, she realised, and threw her doubts away as she went back to the spare bedroom and found her old dress and cardigan. She changed into them, neatly folding the pyjamas on the white pillow of the bed before silently making her way across the landing to the stairs.

Reaching Christine's bedroom, she paused - could she really betray her trust and kindness by leaving to get more drugs? She opened the white door into the master bedroom slowly, looking through the darkness over to the bed where Christine lay. At first, Evanna thought that she was asleep with a man, but she then realised that Christine was sleeping with pillows next to her, nearly making the shape of a human, as if to make up for Michael not being there with her. Evanna's heart wrenched for what she was about to do - two people leaving her in the space of a month would be heartbreaking for her, but Evanna hoped that, as a former addict, she'd understand why.

Closing the door, she sighed, looking down at her shaking hands. She had to get a fix. Had to. She'd die if she didn't have something; some foreign warmth flooding through her cold veins; something to kill the pain that her mind and body constantly inflicted upon her soul. She snuck down the stairs, her black tights silent on the cream carpet, until she reached the hallway. The kitchen was right next to her, and she stepped onto the cold, tiled floor, turning the blindingly bright light and squinting as she looked around the room, noticing that there was a small notepad and pen by the patio doors which overlooked the garden. She tiptoed across to where the notepad was on the work surface, and picked up the pen with her left hand, flexing her fingers uncomfortably as she held it.

Bringing the pen down to the paper, she began to write, slowly and laboriously;

_"Christine. I am sorry for going, but you should know what it is like when you need a fix this badly. Thank you, from Evanna x"_

She couldn't spell some of the words she wanted to write, and so had to improvise using more simple words that she could spell. Her handwriting was messy, not helped by her shaking limbs - the letters on the page were swirled and spiralled in an attempt to copy Christine's beautiful handwriting, but there were spaces between the letters, where Evanna had been thinking deeply as to how to spell the words. She sighed as she looked at the notepad, before looking back at her shaking hands and realising that she had to go.

She slipped her battered boots onto her feet, shivering at the feel of the cold leather through her tights as she made her way towards the front door, the guilt gnawing away at her as she opened it and the cold air hit her in a blast. She pulled her cardigan around her and stepped out, closing the door behind her and retrieving the spare key from underneath the doormat, locking the door behind her and sighing. She replaced the key, feeling her joints crack as she bent down and then straightened back up.

And without a backwards glance, Evanna was gone, off searching desperately for her next fix.

Christine spotted the note as soon as she walked into the kitchen; the notepad halfway across the worktop rather than at the end where she knew she'd left it last night. Her heart was in her mouth as she walked over to read what had been written by Evanna last night.

_"Christine, I am sorry for going, but you should know what it is like when you need a fix this badly. Thank you, from Evanna x"_

The note was in messy, barely legible handwriting, like that of a small child rather than a girl of Evanna's age. It was only to be expected that the teen's writing was unclear and uneven, given that she hadn't been to school in six years, but it still managed to shock Christine just how illiterate the girl was - the sentence structure was something she'd expect to read from a primary school student. That was the trouble with being an English teacher - overanalysing everything.

It had been inevitable, really, Christine thought - she should have known that, being a recovering alcoholic - Evanna was bound to get so desperate that she'd do anything in the world just to get a fix. It saddened her to realise what her life used to revolve around, and what Evanna's still did - everything below her addiction; the most important part of her. The first thing she thought about when she woke, the last before she slept.

Leaving the kettle to boil (she'd put too much water in it, as if she was expecting to make other people's tea and coffee, too), she made her way upstairs to the spare room where Evanna had slept last night, to find the pyjamas folded perfectly on the neatly made bed. She supposed that Evanna had deployed the same method as she did when she was trying not to think about her addiction; tidying the house obsessively until everything was perfectly placed and the surfaces were so clean that they gleamed, even in the dark.

Christine sighed, looking out of the window over the sea for a moment before turning and going back down the stairs of her big, empty house. She'd slept awfully last night, with two pillows next to her in an attempt to recreate a vague representation of another person's form. She estimated that she'd had about two hours of decent rest, and she now had a ten-hour day to contend with, along with the possible absence of Nicki to further add to the workload.

She made her way back down the stairs, hearing the hiss of the kettle as the water reached boiling point and steam billowed out of it. As she made the sole cup of coffee, a tear rolled down her cheek, and she pretended that it was just the steam condensing on her face and the strong sense of the coffee. She remembered the time on the beach with Michael - _what do you think I am, American?_ The smell of coffee reminded her of him, because coffee was what she made for him every morning (apparently he was incapable of using the kettle, as she was with the oven or microwave).

Her heart ached now; not only for Michael, but for Connor, for Imogen and for Evanna. She hated being alone in her house; it was like before, when she was drinking alone until ridiculous hours in the morning, but she was determined not to slip backwards again. Sadly, she knew that Evanna may never get that far so as to be able to look back at where she'd come from, and Christine shed one more tear as she went back upstairs to get dressed, the drop making its way down her cheek and silently into her coffee.

* * *

_**Thank you for your reviews - I've written more chapters, which I'll continue to upload every couple of days (I have a plan for this fic, you see, as opposed to just writing total rubbish as it comes to me). Of course, it would mean the world if you reviewed this chapter; it doesn't take long but it means a lot!**_


	5. Stone Cold Sober?

It was Saturday morning in the Edinburgh flat Michael Byrne had rented after leaving Greenock last month. It was large, open and spacious, but it was so cold, being in it alone, without Connor and Imogen - and, of course, Christine. Because pulling a different woman every night and bringing them back here wasn't ever going to be the same as waking up in the middle of the night with Christine asleep in his arms; the smell of her perfume and shampoo in the air as she slept, the feel of her body as she breathed, as she moved in her sleep.

The other issue with not having Christine was that he had nobody to talk to; nobody to hold as they looked out of the window together in silence, content just to hear each other's breathing as he wrapped his arms around her waist. He couldn't come home from work and talk to her as they cooked tea - or rather, he cooked whilst Christine made endless cups of coffee, as she was borderline useless at cooking. The problem was that commitment terrified him - it always had; the thought of settling down was alien to him. When he'd said that he didn't love her, that wasn't his heart speaking - it was his mind, telling him not to commit, telling him that he ought to run away while he could, because he knew that in his heart, he adored her. Every day since then he'd regretted that choice, and he was now stood by the window in his cold, empty new flat, mulling over his actions.

He had a large mug of instant coffee in his hand, the taste of which was disgusting. Christine had always made good coffee, he thought, but it just reminded him of everything he'd foolishly walked away from that day when he'd packed his bags and left her, driving down to Edinburgh where he'd known there was a job with his name on it at a secondary school in the city centre. His new school, too, was nothing like what he knew - Waterloo Road may have been a challenge, but he'd enjoyed pretty much every minute of it, because there was always something happening. Here, his paperwork wasn't punctuated by fights and protests over animal rights, but by the cups of that disgusting instant coffee that he made himself to pass the time. Hell, he even missed Sonya - his new secretary was far too organised, after he'd experienced the constant turmoil created by having Janeece, and later Sonya, assisting him.

The woman he'd been with last night had left about half an hour ago - a young, raven-haired sports coach from somewhere in London. He hadn't been listening to what she'd been saying - he'd been too busy trying to find the polar opposite of Christine in an attempt to dislodge her from his mind, but he vaguely remembered her accent. Yes, she'd been from London, but he still longed to hear Christine's accent as she asked him if he wanted a cup of coffee in the morning (he'd often wondered why she asked; the answer was always the same - who didn't want coffee in the morning?). He was now stood alone at the window with the steaming mug of awful-tasting instant coffee, wishing fervently that Christine was there with him.

There was no way she'd take him back now, he thought - she was strong and stubborn; qualities he'd grown to love her for. Her strength, in admitting what had happened to her in the farmhouse about eighteen years ago, had made him realise that she wasn't just a hopeless alcoholic without a cause. She'd drank because she needed salvation from her own memory; needed to block out the images. When she'd cried onto his shoulder that night after admitting the occurrences back in that house, he'd realised just how strong she was to everyone else, but just how vulnerable she was at times. She'd never let anybody see her like that, and he was sure that he'd never manage to break down her walls again. And now, he felt incredibly guilty for leaving her - she'd always thought men were like that after her husband had left her to bring up their child alone, and now Michael had proven her correct. He felt a coward for letting her down, all because he'd been scared of commitment. What if she went back to alcohol? She'd almost drank herself to death in the past, and he knew that it would only take something like this to tip her back into alcoholism. And then it really would be all his fault. His eyes were closed, and an image of Christine passed out in her kitchen surrounded by bottles materialised - he could see tear tracks on her fragile skin, smell the strong alcohol in the air, feel the desperation in the room as he looked on, helpless.

He opened his eyes, and was back in his flat again, alone but for the recurring thought of Christine. He poured the hot coffee down the sink and went back to his bedroom, picking up a pair of trousers and a shirt from the chair and hurriedly getting dressed whilst wondering where he'd thrown his keys last night. As he buttoned up his crisp white shirt, he spotted the keys on top of his briefcase in the corner of his room, and he quickly picked them up as he one-handedly fastened his leather belt and went back through to the kitchen, grabbing the slightly cold slice of badly buttered toast from the white plate on the worktop as he picked up his phone, sighing at the lack of messages.

Checking that he had his wallet, he made his way over to the front door of the flat, giving it a cursory look around as if to check that he hadn't forgotten anything, and left, stepping out into the cold stairwell, still making his way through the slice of toast. He knew that the clothes he'd taken from Greenock were still in the boot of his car, should he end up staying up there for a while, which he sincerely hoped he would, but doubted that Christine would forgive him quite that quickly. He ran down the stairs two at a time until he reached the ground floor and got to his car, unlocking it quickly so as to get away from the freezing cold weather outside. The drive to Greenock would take him around two hours - time which he knew he'd spend trying to establish what he wanted to say to Christine. He sighed, a cloud of his breath in the cool air, and got into the car.

* * *

It had been three days since she'd left Christine's house. Evanna was now sat on a grubby stone step in front of a shabbily painted red door next to a cheap off licence, wearing the same attire she'd turned up at Christine's in. The temperature must have been in single figures as she sat there, cardigan wrapped tightly around her, and a polystyrene cup in front of her which contained a few copper and silver coins from passers-by who'd felt sorry for her. The rest, she imagined, saw her as a good-for-nothing junkie. It was raining - well, drizzling - and everyone walking along the street had umbrellas or hooded coats to prevent the rainwater getting to them, whilst still managing to ignore the teenager in the doorway clad in a dress and cardigan which had definitely seen better days.

A man came out of the off-licence, and for a moment, Evanna thought she recognised him. She didn't know where from, but there was definitely a flicker of recognition somewhere in her hazy mind. He was about six feet tall, and wore a crisp white shirt with black suit trousers and a jacket - he must have been well off, Evanna thought, because of the way he was presented. He had mid-brown hair and piercing blue eyes, which seemed to soften slightly as he saw her sat in the doorway. He took his black leather wallet out - that was expensive, too, she noted - and took a five pound note out. Instead of giving it to her, however, he asked her if she wanted anything from the off-licence, and proceeded to buy her food and water as she waited outside. He knew, she thought, that she'd just spend the money on drugs if he gave it to her, and she began to wonder about his occupation. She eventually settled upon thinking that the man was a teacher, like Christine, as she observed his manner. Yes, a teacher - a science teacher, she imagined, or a head teacher.

He gave her the carrier bag of food, his eyes kind and warm like Christine's had been. How was it that she'd met two of the most helpful people in the past week, and never any in the previous sixteen and a half years?

"If you ever need any food or anything, call me." He told her, handing her a business card with his name and several contact numbers on, before smiling kindly at her and walking away - and then it hit her, that she knew who he was. Christine's boyfriend; the one who'd upped and left her just a couple of weeks ago, breaking her heart into tiny little pieces which had shattered all around her. Evanna hurriedly got up, using all of the strength in her spindly legs to support her as she ran after him, the rain soaking her face until she almost caught up with him.

"She needs you," Evanna shouted, and the man stopped and turned around, frowning, "Your girlfriend. Go back to her."

He looked confused, but seemed to think about what Evanna had said to him as he continued up the road. She smiled to herself and looked down at the pavement to try and hide her emotions - she wasn't the most expressive person in the world. Her hand was shaking again - she'd been trying to put off her next fix in an attempt to preserve the amount of heroin she had left, but the withdrawal symptoms were beginning to show. She returned to the doorway where she'd been sat, and picked up the carrier bag and the cup, and she then wandered down a side alley and took out her needle from where she always stored it, in her bra. As she took it out, a gust of wind made the body of her cardigan fly up in the air, and the business card fluttered to the damp pavement of the alley. She picked it up, slowly reading it before she placed it back in her pocket.

_Michael Byrne - Headteacher._

* * *

Her kitchen was cold, the tiles freezing against her skin as she walked barefoot over to the sink in front of the window. Connor and Imogen had gone on a History trip to Belgium with Audrey, the poor woman, and Christine was resultantly left alone in her house again. No Michael, no Evanna. She was wearing an old pair of jeans and a cream top - the one she'd been wearing when he'd first kissed her, down on the beach, when they'd both been freezing cold, Christine having followed Michael into the sea as he tried to salvage her lesson plans. They'd walked back to his house, where they'd spent the evening together, and it was then that she'd known that she'd fallen for him. She now smiled vaguely at the memory as she gazed out towards the cold, powerful sea, pressing her lips together as if to try and suppress any emotion she felt.

It had been one-hundred-and-seventeen days since she'd had a drink, not counting the glass of white wine she'd had when Michael left. One-hundred-and-seventeen days was a long time, she thought to herself as she gazed out of the window, her figure slumped as she rested her hands on the sink, holding her body up with her arms. Thirty-three days since Michael had left. Three since Evanna. Why was it that everyone she cared for eventually left her? Was she really that bad a person, that people couldn't stand being in her company?

A tear escaped from her eye, and she didn't bother to wipe it away as she looked out of the window, over the cold sea. It still reminded her of Michael's eyes when he'd left. Cold, and unintentionally harsh. He wasn't like that with her before - he'd been warm, kind and understanding, right up until that fateful moment, thirty-three days ago.

_"I don't love you"_.

If he'd been there now, she knew, he'd have wiped the tears from her face gently with his thumb, taken her to the sofa or to bed, and held her until she stopped crying. She'd adored that quality in him - the caring, sincere side that few people truly saw or appreciated.

The problem was that when she was alone and felt like this, there was only one solution that she'd ever known. Drink. One hundred and seventeen days... but she had to. Nobody, except perhaps Evanna, could understand how she was feeling now; the turmoil in her head as she reached almost subconsciously into the cupboard for the bottle of cheap supermarket brand vodka she knew would be there. Unscrewed the lid. Brought the neck of the cold, glass bottle to her pursed lips.

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_Leave me a review if you made it all the way through this chapter, which is a bit longer than usual (I've already written a few more chapters, some of which are even longer!). Thank you for your reviews so far, too - they mean a lot!_


	6. The Bottom Of A Bottle

_Thank you for your reviews - it's lovely to know how many people are reading this. Keep on reviewing! This chapter is a bit shorter than the last one, and the one that will follow it, but nonetheless, it would be fantastic to hear your thoughts on it.  
_

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He still had the keys to Christine's house, as if both of them had hoped that he'd be coming back. He decided, however, to go round the back of the house and see if Christine was in - if she was, he'd knock the door and hope she'd let him in. He was pretty sure that this was the weekend that Connor and Imogen were in Belgium with the rest of the A Level History group, and so Christine would be in the house on her own... unless, the thought occurred to him, she'd found another man. He couldn't bear to see her with someone else, he realised, and it once again hit him just how stupid he'd been to leave.

He went through the red gate at the side of the house, trying not to look at the steps at the front of the house where he'd kissed her, and along the path leading to the large, open garden. He remembered holding a barbeque for the staff in this garden, on a sunny day in late July, just after Christine had stopped drinking. That evening, the two of them had lain together in the sunshine on the grass, like two teenage lovers, and Michael had told her that he loved her, and how proud he was that she'd finally stopped drinking, as they'd watched their colleagues eating, drinking and laughing on the patio. She'd cried, apologising profusely as she always did when she cried, and he'd held her body against his as the sun had begun to set. He smiled at the memory, now, as he entered the garden and began to approach the large sliding doors that led through into the kitchen.

Before looking through the doors, the thought of the girl by the off licence came back to him. How could she possibly have known what he was doing? Her eyes had reminded him of Christine at her most desperate, with their swirling depth and pleading - but her eyes were blue, where Christine's were that beautiful, warm hazel, with green, brown and amber all shot through the irises. But he remembered the look of need that he'd always seen from Christine when she was drunk; begging him to save her from the agony of her own mind as she tried to drink her troubles away.

For a moment, he looked out across the garden. The patio, next to where he was stood, was made of grey stone, and there was a wicker table and chairs placed centrally, where they used to eat on long, hot summer days when the kitchen seemed like too small a place. He remembered, at the staff barbecue, Sonya finding a radio station playing some godawful 80's music, and the gaggle of teachers dancing to the various dreadful songs blasting out of the kitchen - Tom and Nicki, Grantly and Maggie, and Michael and Christine, as well as various other members of staff singing along badly to Vienna, amongst other songs, and Grantly showing off his infamous solo dancing skills. All of that seemed a distant memory now, as he looked at the grey sky and listened to the waves crashing down by the sea behind him, at the front of the house.

He thought of the evening when they'd snuck off from school, and gone down to the beach. It had been cold and windy then - freezing, actually - and he should know, because he'd ran into the sea trying to save Christine's lesson plans, while she'd laughed hysterically at his madness. She was beautiful when she laughed - she was beautiful anyway, in his opinion, but especially so when she laughed; her eyes sparkled and her smile light her face up. He missed her laugh, as well, he decided.

He walked a little further down the garden to the abandoned swing underneath an old oak tree - it had been Connor's when he was little, Christine had said, and she'd never got around to taking it down. He remembered, before she'd stopped drinking, that if he came to her house to find her, she'd usually be sat on the old wooden swing with a bottle of vodka, somehow balancing on the precarious looking plank despite being blind drunk and barely able to recognise him. In the summer, they'd sat by the swing finishing off paperwork in the rare Scottish sunshine, Michael sat on the floor with his jacket abandoned on the patio, Christine rocking slowly backwards and forwards on the swing.

It was strange how the garden could hold so many memories, he thought as he walked back up towards the kitchen doors, the bitter wind blowing in his face. He wondered if she'd done that; walked down the garden just thinking about everything that had happened in each facet of the place. The patio, the swing, the oak tree - everything in that place was significant to them in some tiny way.

As he reached the sliding doors, he peered into the apparently empty kitchen. It was tidy, as usual - Christine was incredibly house proud, and would spend hour upon hour cleaning until the surfaces absolutely gleamed. He supposed that it was one of the ways she occupied herself so that she wouldn't drink - running around the house was a distraction from the constant temptation of the bottle. He took the cleanliness of the kitchen as a hopeful sign that she wasn't drinking, but he was sure that he was just kidding himself to make himself feel less guilty about leaving her. He squinted around the room, and was just about to go round to the front of the house when he spotted her, stood at the sink.

For a moment, he thought she was doing the washing up, but he soon realised that the sink was empty. The bottle she held in her hands did not contain washing up liquid, but a far more sinister, clear substance. A glass bottle. A vodka bottle.

He panicked instantly, hurriedly pulling his keys out of his pocket as silently as he could and searching for the correct one to unlock the patio doors. He couldn't see from where he was stood if the bottle in her hands was empty, but he desperately hoped that he'd caught her before she drank herself mindless, as he'd witnessed her doing too many times before. He rammed the key into the lock, but Christine seemed oblivious, as if she was in another dimension to him as he turned the key violently and slid the glass door open.

She was bringing the bottle to her lips now; the red lid discarded on the floor as she raised the vodka to her mouth, time seeming to slow down as he jumped up the step into the kitchen. The cold alcohol was running up the bottle towards her mouth, and he saw a desperation in her eyes that he'd hoped she'd never feel again. The desperate need to be free from her turmoil; to feel numb and detached from the world around her; to feel salvation from her own mind.

"Christine!" he shouted, but she seemed entirely oblivious to him, taking a swig of the vodka as he came towards her. She was staring blankly out of the window with no emotion, no feeling to her expression as she drank, the bottle emptying faster than Michael could get to her.

Finally reaching her, he grabbed the bottle in her hand, taking her by surprise as he tried to take the bottle from her. She turned, and he saw in that moment that he'd been too late to stop her - her eyes were filled with salty tears, some of which were flowing freely down her pale cheeks, taking her mascara with them and leaving dark trails down her fragile skin. She wouldn't let go of the bottle, and whilst he knew that he was stronger than her, her stubbornness was further amplified when she was drunk - she pulled back, screaming something incomprehensible at him as she tried to get the bottle from his hands, the vodka that was left in it splashing on the gleaming worktops and tiles as he tried to prise the bottle from her hands.

Her grip slipped, the bottle flying out of both of their hands, but he was watching her as she began to fall backwards, her bare feet slipping from beneath her, eyes wide and terrified as she fell in what felt like slow motion. Michael stood, helpless, his hands too slow to save her as she fell from him, unable to tell her arms to save her because she was too blind drunk to control her own body.

She screamed, hitting the floor hard, just before the vodka bottle smashed on the tiles in front of her, shards of glass flying everywhere, one piercing the exposed skin of her arm. For one moment, Michael was frozen, until the sound of her scream jolted him back into harsh reality; Christine lying on the floor surrounded by bits of glass from the smashed bottle, her arm already beginning to bleed, a little of the crimson blood flooding onto the white tiles.


	7. Come Closer

Michael knelt down to Christine, but she pushed him away with more strength than he thought she possessed as she tried to sit up, her eyes streaming with her heightened emotions and the pain of her bleeding arm. He'd imagined that the fall would have weakened her and helped bring her back to her senses, but if anything, she seemed angrier than she was before, shouting at him with a flurry of slurred words as she realised that all the vodka was in pools on the kitchen floor. He tried to take her hand, but again, she pushed him away, curling up in the middle of the cold, tiled floor, clasping her legs as tightly as she could in her drunken state, mumbling something to herself as she tended to do when she was drunk - and God knew, Michael had seen her drunk enough times to know that.

"Look what you've done!" she cried, lifting her head for a moment and looking at him piercingly, her bloodshot eyes growing weaker as she spoke. He took the chance to pin her now wildly flailing arms to her sides, using all of his strength just to keep her still as she resisted, trying to push him away as she cried, her breath coming in gulps and gasps as she sobbed, kicking and screaming at him with very little or no coordination, much like a child having a tantrum.

Suddenly, all her resistance seemed to leave her, and she let him pull her shaking body up to standing, her arms around his neck as he took her over to the kitchen table, sitting her down gently on one of the chairs. He didn't know if she even had any idea who he was - she hadn't mentioned his name, and he assumed that her intoxicated mind was unable to process his face - he'd thought that she'd have started screaming at him for leaving by now if she recognised him, but instead, she just sat crying silently at the table, her eyes blank, but the salinity of the tears having made her irises like tiny kaleidoscope patterns; green and amber. He heard her murmur something, and strained to hear what she was mumbling as she covered her face with her shaking hands like she was trying to shield herself from something.

"Don't hurt me," she slurred, her eyes suddenly meeting his, the pleading and the desperation back in them, "Please don't hurt me."

He was confused for a moment, before it hit him just what she was talking about. Her ex-father-in-law; the farmhouse... the rape. She started crying again, silently, hot tears flowing wildly down her face. She didn't seem to have noticed her arm, but Michael glanced momentarily at it and saw the part of the glass bottle still sticking out of her right forearm, blood seeping from around it and dripping down onto the gleaming tiles as her hand was dropped at her side.

"Christine, you need to stay still, okay?" he began, getting a pair of tweezers from her makeup bag in her black handbag on the table, finding the first aid box to the side of the oven as if he'd not been gone from this house for longer than a day or so. Placing the box on the large, wooden table, he sat down and got a bandage and some antiseptic cream, before gently taking her right hand and resting it on the table in front of him, picking up the tweezers.

"That's what he said," she mumbled, looking at the floor, eyes still producing tears which she didn't seem to notice, "He told me to stay still." Michael felt more than a little uncomfortable listening to her recount this, but he knew that it was the only way to keep her still, by getting her to speak. He noticed, as he began to remove the shard of glass, that her arms had light freckles on them - it was amazing, he thought, the details that he'd never noticed of her. She didn't seem to feel anything as he placed the piece of glass on the table and opened the antiseptic cream, and he supposed that it was because of the alcohol's effect. He felt her arm tense as he applied the cream to the cut, and he looked up to see her gaze harden as she seemed to finally recognise him.

"Michael," she said, her eyes filling with something indistinguishable, and he prepared himself for what she'd say;

"I'm so sorry."

Well, he wasn't expecting that. He'd expected her to drunkenly hit him, to shout at him, to scream in his face - maybe he'd even wanted her to do that, because it might have given him a sense of how much he'd destroyed and hurt her. But she didn't - she just sat there, looking at him with her deep, warm eyes full of tears. He thought, for a moment, that she looked as if she was crying alcohol to purge it from her system. She stood up, staring at the floor like she was a student having been sent to his office, and she looked so vulnerable that he instinctively wrapped his arms around her quaking figure.

She smelt of a mixture of her perfume and the alcohol she'd consumed, which was an oddly beautiful combination because it reminded him exactly how much she needed someone - anyone - right now. She held onto him as if her life was dependent on it, and he stroked her smooth, blonde locks as she cried into his chest, her tears soaking through his white shirt from her eyes, and blood from the wound on her arm, and he knew that would leave stains from her mascara and blood, but he didn't mind, for now.

He knew that she wouldn't be doing this if she was sober - in fact, she'd probably have thrown him out by now if she was sober - but for now, she was blind drunk, scared and vulnerable, and he just needed to hold her until she could speak to him without sobbing.

"What are you sorry for?"

"I failed." she mumbled, and he felt her gulp for air after that. Christine had always been ashamed of her alcoholism, and she'd become an expert at hiding when she was drunk or drinking. It must have been three months, he thought, since she'd last been like this, and it genuinely upset him to see her in this state, barely able to control her own body.

"You didn't fail, darling." He told her quietly, slowly stroking her hair as she clutched his shirt. He didn't think he'd ever called her darling, even when they were together, but it seemed oddly appropriate at that particular moment in time, and it seemed to comfort her slightly. He kissed the top of her head, inhaling the familiar scent of her, and felt her sobs finally begin to subside, her breathing becoming less laboured and her body less tense, until it felt almost like he was just holding her last month, before he'd gone and blown his chance at happiness with her.

* * *

She was sat on the sofa now, clutching her red cardigan to her body and shivering. The cut on her arm had finally stopped bleeding after he'd bandaged it for the third time and made her stay still before making her two slices of toast in an attempt to dilute the alcohol in her stomach slightly (He hadn't made coffee, because he knew how useless he was at it, and didn't want to make her feel any more sick). He didn't know how long she'd been drinking, but she seemed to be starting to sober up slightly, if only a little - her limbs had stopped shaking as violently, and she wasn't behaving as erratically as she had been. Michael was sat on a kitchen chair opposite the sofa, watching her and waiting for her to speak first, just as he had when she'd admitted everything that had happened almost eighteen years ago at the farmhouse.

"Why does everyone leave me?" she wondered aloud, staring blankly out of the window to her right, overlooking the grey sea, as if she was talking to herself, "Joe, you, Connor, Imogen... Evanna." She glanced at Michael during her sentence as if to affirm the fact that he was still sat opposite her, listening to her every word.

"Evanna?" Michael questioned, presuming that her intoxicated mind was just confusing people's names, and that she probably meant somebody else - he didn't know anyone called Evanna, and Christine had never mentioned anyone by that name before.

"She's only sixteen, but she just needs someone. She's an addict - a junkie - but she's got nothing... nobody - she ran away from care when she was younger. She turned up here on Tuesday evening, she stayed... but she got desperate. She left me on my own." Christine was still looking out of the window, speaking almost as if she was alone and recounting who the girl was.

He realised in that moment just how caring and empathetic Christine was - he'd always known it, but the way she was in some situations, such as with Dynasty, and seemingly the girl called Evanna, just went to show her nature; another of the things that had made him love her. He had to tell her that when she sobered up - he had to explain why he left; had to tell her that he still very much adored her, despite what he'd said.

"She looks like she could break... a little china doll - long, wavy, white-blonde hair, eyes so deep and blue you could jump in and swim around in them. She's tiny; so skinny her legs don't look like they could support anything, never mind a person," she carried on, describing the girl in incredible depth, as if she was writing a book or a poem, "It was like looking at myself aged sixteen, you know?" Her eyes finally met Michael's, and a lone tear rolled down her cheek, taking what had remained of her mascara with it and leaving a greyish black trail down her skin.

"I don't want her to go through what I did." She finally said, after a pause in which a pin could have been heard dropping in her living room, holding her gaze on Michael, her beautiful almond shaped eyes steady and wide, almost childlike in a disturbing sense.

She stood up, swaying slightly as she began to walk over to the window - the alcohol wasn't quite out of her system yet - and he followed her, standing a couple of feet behind when she stopped, resting her hands on the white wooden windowsill and sighing. The light made her look pale and vulnerable, which he supposed she was, but he just didn't want to see it, because he knew he had only himself to blame. At that moment, looking at her, all he wanted to do was put his arms around her, lie her down and hold her until she slept, just like he used to whenever she was upset. He couldn't do that now, because he worried that she'd wake up, sober again, and be absolutely furious with him for it, innocent as his intentions were.

So instead, he stood beside her and let her come to him, let her place her head on his shoulder and hold onto him once more. It was four hours, now, since she'd had a drink, and he knew that she'd be almost entirely sober by now - because she'd drank so much in the past, her body was used to the effects of the toxin, and she wasn't affected as harshly as some people were by it. She was still vulnerable, though, still desperate for someone to hold her until she sobered up - she'd told him before that she actually couldn't stand being drunk, but she felt that it was the only logical solution to all of her problems.

He just hoped that, when she finally was sober, he'd be able to explain, to tell her why he left, and to tell her that he still loved her so much that he could hardly breathe when he thought of her. He hoped that she'd understand. She, of all people, should be able to understand forgiveness.

She'd never told him much, if anything, about her life when she was younger. He knew that she'd never got on with her parents, but she'd never said why, exactly. He also remembered her saying various offhand remarks about certain things - tiny, tiny clues as to what had happened to her during her youth -_ "The family without a skeleton in the closet must have buried it.", "We don't ever know anyone, really, do we? Maybe we don't even know ourselves.",_ and the one that had got to him the most,_ "Stuff like that happens, though - children are abused, taken into care, and whatever. It's just the so-called lucky ones that make it out alive."_. He wondered if Christine had been in care when she was a child. He couldn't bring himself to think of the possibility of her having been abused, though.

Perhaps that was where her sense of empathy came from - the understanding of other people's problems, however awful they were. The way she spoke about that girl, Evanna, was like she was talking about her own daughter, not someone who was a near stranger to her; it was almost like Michael himself knew her, because her description had been so detailed.

Wavy, bleach blonde hair. Deep blue eyes. Skinny. Junkie.

The girl at the off-licence. That was Evanna.

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**_I'm sorry if this uploads strangely - I can't afford to buy Microsoft Word, so I'm using a free alternative which is just text, no features such as lines when there's a scene change or anything. I've done my best to edit it, but I'm not sure it's worked!_**

**_And as a sort of P.S; I'd just like to have a quick complaint about how unjust it is that the killer of Trayvon Martin was found not guilty - George Zimmerman shot Trayvon, a 17 year old African American, dead in February last year, claiming self defence despite neighbours and other witnesses saying that Trayvon did nothing to provoke the attack - in fact, his father's fiancée (whom Trayvon was visiting) lived in the community in which he was killed. It's a sad day for mankind when a murderer can get off scot-free, and people are still allowed to carry guns when events like this occur._**


	8. Black Coffee

**_It's 1am, I should be asleep, but what am I doing? Reading about the Potato Famine & Black '47, and writing. It's too hot, too - it reached 34 degrees here today whilst I was running. I feel like the whole island has moved to somewhere by Africa. _**

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He held her as she slept on the sofa, her head resting on his chest as she slept away the effects of the vodka, chest rising and falling rhythmically. He was determined to go and find Evanna, once Christine had awoken - he wasn't going to take any chances and leave Christine alone with God knows how many bottles secreted around the house, but equally wanted her to wake as soon as possible so as he could take her with him on his mission to find the junkie girl who'd been outside the off licence.

He realised that he'd thought that of Christine, before he'd known her properly - that she was a good-for-nothing, abusive alcoholic who couldn't give a toss about anything but where she was going to get her next bottle of vodka from - but he now knew that the overwhelming majority of addicts had reasons behind their issues. Christine certainly had hers - he knew they stretched back far further and ran even deeper than the events in the farmhouse, but that had seemed to be the trigger for her alcoholism. He wondered what the trigger had been for Evanna.

Christine stirred, mumbling something incomprehensible before settling back into his chest and falling quiet again. He'd almost forgotten her tendency to talk in her sleep - if she said anything which was actually audible, it tended to be ridiculous. He remembered her once muttering something about her love of marmalade on toast, and smiled as he now held her body close to his, feeling her breath on the skin of his neck.

It was about 6pm now, and she'd been asleep for a few hours - when she woke up, he hoped she'd be sober enough to reason with him. He wanted so desperately to explain to her that he knew he'd been wrong to leave, and that he still loved her as much as he ever had. He'd been, for want of a better word, a complete prat to Christine - taking her for granted, working too much, and finally leaving her because he was scared of commitment. He had to find a way to make up for everything he'd done.

He looked out of the window, and could have sworn he saw a flash of long, wavy blonde hair - Evanna's hair - outside. He must have jumped at the sight, as it caused Christine to wake up fully and practically go flying off the sofa - her sleeping position had been relatively precarious, and she'd only been kept on the sofa by Michael holding on to her. She clung onto Michael's shirt as she tried to pull herself back onto the sofa, half awake, but succeeded only in pulling both of them off the sofa and onto the floor.

"Shit!" she swore as they landed, then seemed to realise who she was with. Her eyes widened, and they sat up simultaneously, Christine's back resting against the sofa, Michael opposite her as they stared at each other, each waiting for the other to speak. He was still close enough to smell her perfume and feel her breath against his skin as her chest rose and fell rhythmically.

"What the hell are you doing here?" She asked, her eyes now cold, hard and glinting in the dim light. She folded her arms in an attempt at making herself less vulnerable, sitting up straight and glaring at him, her eyes not wavering. She didn't remember anything, he realised.

"I realised what a mistake I'd made, leaving, so I drove from Edinburgh... I saw you drinking, tried to get the bottle off you, it smashed, and you had half of it in your arm," Michael explained, and Christine looked at her arm where the slightly healing wounds were - she didn't remember those, either. She looked at him expectantly once again, waiting for him to continue;

"I got the glass out of your arm, made you eat something, and then you sat down in here. You told me about Evanna."

At the mention of Evanna's name, Christine's harsh, steely façade crumbled, and rather than sitting up straight, she slid forwards slightly, leaning further back against the sofa and looking up at the cream ceiling. She closed her eyes, placing her left hand partially over her face and biting her lip so hard it looked as if it was going to bleed. Michael noticed a single tear escape her eye, and it slowly began to make its way down her face, glittering in the light the small lamp on the sideboard gave out. Without thinking, he reached out and went to wipe the drop of saltwater from her skin. She flinched at the contact of his thumb on her face, but didn't protest as he wiped the tear from her skin - in fact, she tilted her head so as she was looking straight at him, her gaze unfaltering.

He felt her touch his arm, like she was making sure that he was really there with her, before letting out a sob, her body shaking violently as she tried, and failed, to breathe. He was frozen for a moment, his brain going through everything he could possibly do in that second, before sitting next to her, cradling her in his arms as she cried. He knew that her drunken thoughts of Evanna were the only part of the last few hours that Christine could remember - _"I don't want her to go through what I did."._

* * *

He'd talked to her, when she'd calmed down a bit - told her that he loved her, that he should never have left, and that he wanted so, so desperately to show her that. She'd told him to prove himself to her, but surprisingly not raised her voice above her usual tone. She'd made him coffee, and he'd made them spaghetti bolognaise for tea, and that was how they'd found themselves sat at the table in the artificial light of the kitchen, drinking coffee and eating their tea in what was an oddly homely picture.

"This is the first decent cup of coffee I've had in about a month." Michael told her, taking a sip of the piping hot drink from the white mug. She'd always had an uncanny knack of knowing the precise measure of sugar to put in his coffee - perhaps that was because they drank it the same way; black, with about half a teaspoon of coffee, but he'd always believed it was some kind of sixth sense to her - coffee, that was. She sipped her coffee, too, smiling slightly over the rim of the mug - she looked like herself now, her eyes alert and warm as they gazed into his own.

"I still can't cook. Set a potato on fire in the microwave the other day - Connor laughed at me, of course." she admitted, smiling widely at him as if he'd only been away on a course, rather than having left her alone when she'd needed him most. He laughed, and it reminded them both of being on the beach on that afternoon around six months ago. God, he wished they could go back and do it all again - he'd appreciate exactly how incredible Christine was as a person, make more time for her, and tell her that he loved her. He wished fervently that he'd done that in the first place.

"I missed you." He said, and their eyes were once again frozen in contact; amber-green on grey-blue.

"You mean you missed my coffee."

"Well, that too, but I suppose it's a package, really, isn't it?"

She laughed, and that was the point at which he knew that she was, finally, stone cold sober. Whilst she may not have forgiven him (and who, really, could blame her for that after the way he'd behaved?), their relationship was no longer strained, with awkward sentences flitting backwards and forwards purely because they felt that they ought to be polite. It was progress, he supposed, as he took another sip of coffee, looking at her when he thought she wouldn't notice. Yes - progress. Slow, but nonetheless, progress.  
-


	9. Half The World Away

Connor Mulgrew sat with his wife Imogen on the banks of the river in the town the History students and teachers were staying in in Belgium. He was worrying, as usual, about his mother, as he stared out into the night sky and listened to the river flowing through the town. It was like the sound he and Imogen heard from their bedroom in the front of his mother's house in Greenock - the sound of the sea from about two hundred metres away as they lay in bed in silence. He worried about how his mother was coping, alone in the house... but then again, Connor always worried. It was in his genes to do so.

She'd told her son and daughter-in-law about that girl -_ Eva? Evelyn?_ - who'd turned up a few days ago. She'd told them that she believed the girl - _Evanna,_ that was her name, Connor remembered - was just like her, albeit over twenty years younger. She'd seen the girl's addiction, and known exactly what she felt like. Connor knew that Evanna had managed to break his mother's heart by leaving, even though she'd only been there a matter of hours. Michael had broken it even more when he'd left after so long.

He'd never understood why Michael had gone - Connor knew that the head teacher had adored Christine. He'd seen it in Michael's eyes every time he'd looked at her; every time he'd talked about her - even when someone mentioned her name in passing. Even on the last morning of their relationship, just hours before its incredibly fast demise, Connor had observed Michael and Christine talking alone in the kitchen, their eyes full of adoration as they looked at each other. Six hours later, Christine's eyes had been cold and empty; the tears she'd cried having taken everything with them, leaving only heartache and misery.

"She'll be okay, you know."

Imogen's voice was soft, but it cut through Connor's thoughts like a hot, sharpened knife. It was a relief to hear his wife's reassurance - like coming back into the warm house after a long walk in the freezing cold. She took his hand, and they sat there on the black iron bench, staring out into the darkness together in silence, listening to the powerful river flow past in front of them.

The rest of the students were still in the restaurant, along with Ms McFall, Sonya, Mr Clarkson and Miss Boston, who'd long given up on trying to control their pupils, and instead decided to enjoy their holiday as best they could. Already, three Year 11 boys had succeeded in almost being killed when chased by geese whom they'd fed Smarties, a bunch of Year 12 girls had brought some unsuspecting local young men back to the hotel, and a minor inferno had begun when a peckish Mr Clarkson had decided to light a campfire, with which he intended to toast marshmallows (and, for reasons best known to himself, Haribos), in a field by the hotel with the other teachers. Waterloo Road school trips never went well, though, did they? It was part of their appeal; the inevitability of some catastrophe or other befalling the group, whether they went to Blackpool or Belgium.

"Do you think Michael will go back?" Connor asked his wife, his eyes not moving from a star glinting in the sky. It had always astounded him, the amount of people who were looking at that exact same point at that exact same time as he was - made him feel a little melancholy, perhaps, to know that different things were happening in people's lives as he and his wife sat on a wrought iron bench in Belgium. People were being born, falling in love, breaking up... even dying, whilst they were sat there.

"I think he'd be a fool not to," Imogen started slowly, pressing her lips together, rouged by the cold wind, "But I don't know. Maybe. I think if he did, he'd come back this weekend."

Imogen had always had an uncanny knack of knowing these things - what people would say and do. Connor supposed that, being partially deaf, she'd learnt that rare skill through quiet observance over the years. He'd seen her watching people, sometimes - total strangers, for the most part, but sometimes teachers or pupils, seeming fascinated by their actions and movements. He imagined that his wife was probably right - marriage had taught him that she usually was. He just wanted his mother to be happy again, after everything that had happened. God knew, she deserved it.

"It'll all work out in the end." Imogen murmured, and it was in that moment that Connor realised just how glad he was to have her at his side. Not that he wasn't usually grateful - he was - but right then, it occurred to him that he really couldn't get through everything on his own. He needed Imogen. He always would.

"I hope so." He responded simply, putting an arm around his wife's delicate shoulders. She was wearing his jacket over her t-shirt and hoodie, leaving him cold but for the warmth of her body against his. He closed his eyes for a moment, thinking about nothing but the feeling of Imogen's body, her chest rising and falling as she breathed, the air she exhaled coming out in clouds due to the freezing temperatures. It was even colder here than in Greenock, which had to be some kind of record - his hometown was bitterly cold most of the time, with its inhabitants spending the majority of the year wearing coats. Even whilst the rest of Britain was going through a heatwave, it was almost guaranteed to be cold in Greenock.

"Let's go back in, before anything else can go wrong."

Imogen stood up, pulling her husband with her and looking out across the river one last time. She looked back at Connor, who was still staring at the star - she knew that he was worried about Christine. Who wouldn't be? She hadn't told him that she thought his mother might relapse back into alcoholism after the events of the past month or so, because she knew that Christine was a fighter. She wouldn't just give in, Imogen hoped. Connor, however, would spend every waking moment antagonising over what was happening to her, and so Imogen thought it best to leave his mother to her own devices, just for the weekend.

He smiled at her after a long moment, and the couple turned, walking back up towards the restaurant in which their teachers and fellow students sat. The little restaurant was like a beacon of light - the town itself was about a mile away, and the light from it was faint and distant, unlike that of the restaurant, which was practically blinding for the two teenagers who'd spent the last half-hour or so staring at the darkness. They made their way back to their table, where Kevin, Dynasty and some other students sat laughing and joking, having apparently not noticed their absence.

They passed by the table where the teachers were sat - Mr Clarkson and Miss Boston seemed to be kicking each other under the table, Imogen noted, and she smiled surreptitiously to herself. They were another inevitable couple, just like Christine and Michael had been. She hoped that she was right, and that he'd gone back to Greenock. She hoped that Christine accepted his apology. And most of all, she hoped that he'd been able to prevent her from drinking.

_Again, this is quite a short chapter, because I need to build up to a big event in a couple of chapters. I hope it wasn't too boring! Remember, reviews keep me writing much, much faster. As does a lot of caffeine, which is what fuelled this chapter._


	10. Glass Like Glitter

_Thank you for your reviews, everyone! It's my birthday this weekend, so I probably won't update until about Wednesday as I'm going out with friends and family, and I'm going to several parties, too (I do nothing for about 50 weeks of the year, then around my birthday and Christmas, I do everything!). As ever, reviews are appreciated greatly!_

* * *

God, Greenock was cold, thought Evanna as she walked from the station, still wearing her ancient, torn lace dress and crimson cardigan. She'd been to London - not that she could afford the tickets, but that was where sexuality came into play. Ticket guards were rather less strict if you offered them something other than money for a ticket, she'd discovered.

London had been, for want of a better word, shit - she'd managed to sleep her way into a hotel (hotel managers, too, preferred sex as a currency), and stayed there a night, relying on the hospitality of the homeless on the riverbanks the other nights. The only reason she'd really been down there was because an ex-boyfriend had offered her work for a couple of days as an escort. She felt like a let-down, every time she walked into a swanky hotel to meet a businessman, most of whom had been twice her age. Not only to herself, but to Jess, who'd always told her that escort work was the worst thing in the world, and to Christine, who'd shown her such kindness in those few hours. She could have been getting an education. She could have been helping other people and doing good things in the world... but no, what had she been doing? Meeting the every want of a man who'd probably spent more on the girls he was hiring in a few days than she could earn in a week. At least, she thought now, he'd been a good tipper.

She'd walked down the embankment of the River Thames at night; seen the poor and homeless in cardboard boxes, just how she lived in Greenock. Sat and talked to a woman called Amy, who'd been in her exact position just a few years ago, about drugs and sex and life. The first two things were all the latter revolved around, both Amy and Evanna had agreed. A kind man from a charity came along and gave them food, which they ate gladly as the rain began to fall. At least it had disguised their silent tears.

With the money she'd earned, Evanna had bought herself a pair of cheap, black jeans and a plain black t-shirt, which only highlighted the protrusion of her ribs when she wore it, but the outfit was considerably warmer than her old dress. Having spent two or three nights in London, and visited more hotels than she'd known existed, she'd bought herself something more valuable to her than all the clothes in the world - more alcohol, and more drugs. Strong stuff, the dealer had told her under the bridge - she'd need less of it than what she usually had. It was odd for a dealer to tell her to be cautious when using it, she thought... but he'd shown her how much she'd need and given her the needle so that she could try it out. And he was right; it was very, very good stuff.

She'd used up her packet she'd taken from Greenock by the time she'd finished with the ticket master on the London to Edinburgh train, but she'd been determined to stay clean for a couple of hours so as she could use her new stuff when she got back home - not that she really had one, of course. Home, at the moment, was an alcove in a back alley by an off-licence.

So she set off out of Greenock station in the bitter cold, trying to find a quiet place where she could shoot up and be on her way to somewhere else. The alley by the off-licence seemed too far away, so she ducked behind some waste bins round the back of a restaurant and fastened the old tie around the top of her arm to locate a vein. It was getting more difficult, nowadays, because of the sheer amount of scars on her arms which obscured the veins from the sharp needle - she'd taken to injecting between her toes at one point, but she didn't have time at that moment to remove her boots and tights, and so picked a small gap in the scarring on her right arm to force the needle into. She'd stopped feeling the pain of the injections a long time ago - she was so used to it that it was merely a part of everyday life for her, now, and she felt nothing as the metal slid through her skin and into a vein. She sighed in relief as she injected the substance, feeling the warmth rush through her body. God, that stuff was good.

She put her needle, tie and packet back in her small black handbag (a 'gift', so to speak, from a customer who happened to own a handbag company), before walking back out onto the main road. The light was blinding, but the wind whipping round her made the town seem even colder than usual as she walked slowly in the direction of the off-licence. She could feel her legs growing weaker by the step, but it was a sensation she was used to - not eating for days on end did usually have that effect. She was wasting away, practically - bones protruding all over her body, but food came in as a second thought in comparison to the need for more drugs to fuel her.

For a moment, she thought about going back to Christine's, but not only did she not remember the way, she was sure that she wouldn't be alone. Evanna didn't think she could cope with having to speak to more people, today - people who'd judge her, silently, looking over her scars and her body and making assumptions about everything that had happened in her life. She couldn't bear those looks. Even if Christine was with her boyfriend, Evanna didn't think she could take having to talk to someone who didn't understand exactly what she was going through.

So instead, she walked the familiar route to the off-licence, knowing full well that she was attracting glares from the people she passed in the street. Children staring in awe at her, because she was hardly a usual sight on the streets of Greenock. Teenage boys leering at her, the girls staring and whispering to each other. Adults and elderly people pitying her. She hated it. All of it - nothing matched her desire to just be like everyone else, and not to be judged - to be clean and normal. Except, perhaps, her desire - her need - for more drugs. It was a vicious cycle, for an addict like her - a downwards spiral into oblivion, where doubtless she'd still not find solace.

She looked up, and was sure for a moment that she'd seen Christine across the street. Just as she was about to run through the traffic to her, like a small child would to their mother, she disappeared amongst the hoards of people on the pavement - one among hundreds, who she'd probably never find. Evanna turned around, and carried on towards her home of the back alley, a silent tear running down her face. For a brief few hours, she'd had someone who cared about her; someone who wanted to keep her safe and out of harm's way... but she'd thrown that all away with her pathetic addiction and habits. That was all she was - pathetic. Nobody wanted her for anything but sex. They never would.

_Good-for-nothing junkie._

She'd heard people say that about her, when they were still within earshot - _"tart", "hopeless", "useless"_. All true, she supposed.

With tears still running down her pale face, she finally reached the alley which she called home. She collapsed down onto the cobbled floor, no longer caring about whether her dress would get even more stained - what did it really matter? Her joints ached from walking, although she'd only been on her feet for about twenty minutes - malnutrition didn't do much for the bones, she thought. The pain from her joints was nothing in comparison to the pain her mind was inflicting on her, though, and she knew only one solution, pathetic as it was.

So she took out the needle, tie and packet again, pulling the black tie tight around her skinny upper arm and holding it with her uneven teeth until she could see a free vein in her forearm. The syringe was already pretty much full from earlier, and Evanna took it in her left hand, taking a deep breath before jabbing it into her right arm, trying to find a vein. She couldn't, and pulled the needle out, her vision blurred from the salty tears in her eyes as she pushed the needle back into her arm.

No vein again. Jesus Christ, she was desperate now - she'd have injected it into her neck had she been able to see where the veins were, because she so needed the release from her torment. Nobody could ever possibly understand that.

She took the needle out and tried again, this time succeeding in getting the vein. She exhaled, before pushing the liquid through the needle and into her body. Perhaps she didn't realise exactly how much she'd used, or perhaps her subconscious was just desperate to black everything out, but she injected the entire syringe full of heroin into her arm, the vein throbbing with the fill of drugs.

She pulled the needle out and took the tie off her arm, shoving them in her bag before leaning against the grubby brick wall, exhaling shakily. She felt dizzy, but that was hardly unusual given the amount she'd just injected - she was sure she'd used more than that in the past. She'd be fine, she thought to herself. She always bloody was, no matter how hard she tried.

A wave of nausea came over her, and she threw up the meagre contents of her stomach onto the cobbles next to her. God, she hated this, but it was better than she knew she'd feel without the drugs - at least her mind couldn't hurt her when she was high, because she frankly hardly had a clue where she was. She took a swig from the whisky bottle she'd taken from her handbag - it was half empty now, as she'd been drinking from it since she bought it a few hours ago down in London. She could do with some of the stuff being constantly fed into her system - the cocktail of that and the heroin seemed to help numb the pain.

Her head span as she tried to crawl across the alley to the little alcove where she usually slept. It was crippling her; the drugs and the alcohol combined in her system, but she couldn't help but feel soothed by it. She gave up when she got halfway across the alley, and simply lay on the cobbles, defeated, hair fanned out and her ocean eyes closing without her mind's consent as she stared at the wall which was so close, yet so far away. She let her eyes close then, and didn't try to hold her head up, instead allowing her face to rest on the cold, hard ground.

She didn't care any more.


	11. There's No Drinking After You're Dead

Sunday morning had arrived in the Mulgrew household - not that it was much of a household, Christine thought as she boiled the kettle to make the coffee. Michael had gone to the corner shop on a mission to find some biscuits, and Connor and Imogen weren't due back until late tonight. As for Evanna... well, God alone knew where she was. Christine had been intent upon trying to find her last night, and she and Michael had walked the streets of Greenock by torchlight for a couple of hours in the freezing cold, the wind whipping around them, before eventually admitting that they weren't going to find her, and returning home. Michael had insisted on sleeping on the sofa, and had woken up claiming to be totally crippled. Christine had woken up hungover - for the last time, she'd decided.

She sang softly to herself as she waited for the water to boil - some sad, tortured love song which she, unfortunately, had the ability to relate to after years of failed relationships. She watched the condensation from the steam of the kettle form on the cold glass pane of the window, obscuring the view out to the sea from her warm kitchen - it was nice, on a freezing morning, to come downstairs into the kitchen and stare outside, because it made her feel considerably warmer than she was, looking at the crashing waves. It reminded her that she was lucky enough to have a home.

Connor had texted her earlier to tell her that he and Imogen were fine, and asking her how she was. Christine knew he was worried - anyone would be, leaving their recovering alcoholic mother alone in her house which had God alone knew how many hidden vodka bottles in. She'd replied hastily, telling him that Michael was there and she'd explain everything later. She imagined that probably made him worry more, but she couldn't help that.

The doorbell rang, followed by a series of hurried knocks. It had started raining whilst Michael was out - absolutely pissing it down, in fact, and Christine imagined that the poor man was probably soaked through from his run to the corner shop. She smiled to herself as she sauntered over to the door - of course, she wouldn't have hurried, because her evil sense of humour found things like that infinitely amusing; just like when they'd both ended up in the sea trying to retrieve her lesson plans.

When she opened the red door, Michael was stood on the top stone step, clutching a packet of Chocolate Hobnobs in one hand, and two newspapers in the other (she'd always poked fun at his high-brow choice of _The Telegraph_, whilst he'd joked that she was a communist for reading _The Guardian_). His face didn't imply, however, that he'd simply been drenched in the rain and wanted nothing more than to sit and dry off in the warmth of the kitchen - he was, indeed, drenched, but there was a far more urgent look in his deep aqua eyes. Christine knew from experience that that look meant that something terrible had happened, and felt her heart drop inside her, a shiver running through her body as he spoke.

"I think I've found Evanna."

His words hit her like a freight train - being an English teacher, she automatically analysed everything that everybody said, and "found", to her, didn't implicate that he'd just seen her on his way to the shop, walking down the road towards the beach, or into town. No, "found" implied that there was something wrong - very, very wrong. It was used for objects - lifeless dolls and suchlike, not people.

"Found" implied that Evanna was now lifeless.

"Michael's there."

Imogen had been dozing off to sleep on the coach back to Greenock when Connor's words woke her. They were still in Belgium, somewhere - Miss Boston had ended up tipping a group of Year 11 boys out of bed that morning, which had somewhat delayed their departure from the hotel, despite being quite a spectacle, and a source of great amusement to the other students (those who hadn't been thrown out of their beds by the former soldier).

"So.?" Imogen asked cautiously, opening one bright blue eye and looking at her husband. Her mother-in-law's relationship with their former headteacher didn't concern her in the slightest - she knew full well that Michael would always love Christine, as he had for so long. She knew that he'd do his damnedest not to hurt her again... but Connor, of course, would never see it like that.

"So?" he responded incredulously, "So when he goes again, she might start drinking. So when he breaks her heart for a second time, she'll find another vodka bottle and think that 'just a little' will make it all okay. If he hurts her again, he'll kill her - you know that."

Connor had an incredible ability to get worked up over nothing, Imogen thought - another trait he'd inherited from his mother. Imogen herself knew that Michael wouldn't break Christine's heart again, because she knew that he still loved her, and that the time he'd been away had served only as a catalyst to make his love ever stronger.

"Connor, he loves her. You could see that - I think he just needed time to clear his head, you know? Anyway, your mum's not stupid - if he was using her, she'd see straight through him."

He seemed slightly calmed by his wife's words, but Imogen could still see his mind racing. He never seemed to stop worrying - if he did, he'd probably go mad because he had nothing to think about, Imogen thought, so it was probably best that he just kept on worrying over tiny things. Not better for her whilst she was trying to sleep, however.

She closed her eyes, knowing that this was going to be a long journey if her husband didn't stop shuffling in his seat and mumbling to himself. He seemed to go quiet after a while, presumably thinking that his wife was asleep and not wanting to disturb her (for fear of being eaten alive, more than anything).

Just as Imogen was about to drop off to sleep, there was an almighty crash from the front of the bus where Mr Clarkson and Miss Boston were sat, apparently asleep. Connor shot out of his seat, hitting his head against the overhead rack and alarming his wife with his sudden movement as he looked for the source of the noise. The initial crash was followed by several thuds, and shouts from the two teachers, as bags rained down on them from above, where they'd been hastily (and badly) stacked by Mr Clarkson in an attempt to show that he was just as strong as his colleague.

Imogen opened one eye wearily, watching the scene unfold before her. Sleepily, she brought her hands up and switched off her hearing aids, isolating herself from the kerfuffle which seemed to have embroiled the whole upper deck as they laughed at (and, in some isolated cases, assisted) the two teachers. That was one positive of being partially deaf, Imogen decided - she didn't have to listen to all of the calamities taking place around her, and instead, she could fall asleep in peace. She sighed, curling up in her seat and resting her head against the window. Yes, this was going to be the longest ten hours of her entire life.


End file.
